"Clarification: Dale Gavlak assisted in the research and
writing process of this article, but was not on the ground in Syria.
Reporter Yahya Ababneh, with whom the report was written in
collaboration, was the correspondent on the ground in Ghouta who spoke
directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical
weapons attacks and local residents.

Gavlak is a MintPress News Middle East correspondent who has been
freelancing for the AP as a Amman, Jordan correspondent for nearly a
decade. This report is not an Associated Press article; rather it is
exclusive to MintPress News.

Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of
the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without
Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it
believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.

The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League
have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying
out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S.
warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military
strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S.
and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with
U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”

However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta
residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture
emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via
the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were
responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the
weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim,
the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed
inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant,
known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father
described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others
were like a “huge gas bottle.”

Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use
them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were
chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he
must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she
warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for
fear of retribution.

A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed.
“Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except
with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They
merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he
said.

“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately,
some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the
explosions,” ‘J’ said.

Doctors who treated the chemical weapons attack victims
cautioned interviewers to be careful about asking questions regarding
who, exactly, was responsible for the deadly assault.

The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders added that
health workers aiding 3,600 patients also reported experiencing similar
symptoms, including frothing at the mouth, respiratory distress,
convulsions and blurry vision. The group has not been able to
independently verify the information.

In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi
Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many
observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at
the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.

Ingersoll referred to an article in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks alleging that Bandar offered Russian President Vladimir Putin cheap oil in exchange for dumping Assad.

“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in
Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen
terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no
accord,” Ingersoll wrote.

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics
next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games
are controlled by us,” Bandar allegedly told the Russians.

“Along with Saudi officials, the U.S. allegedly gave the
Saudi intelligence chief the thumbs up to conduct these talks with
Russia, which comes as no surprise,” Ingersoll wrote.

“They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the
diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver
what the CIA couldn’t: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S.
diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout,” it said.

Bandar has been advancing Saudi Arabia’s top foreign policy
goal, WSJ reported, of defeating Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah
allies.

To that aim, Bandar worked Washington to back a program to arm and train rebels out of a planned military base in Jordan.

The newspaper reports that he met with the “uneasy Jordanians about such a base”:

His meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah sometimes
ran to eight hours in a single sitting. “The king would joke: ‘Oh,
Bandar’s coming again? Let’s clear two days for the meeting,’ ” said a
person familiar with the meetings.

Jordan’s financial dependence on Saudi Arabia may have given the Saudis strong leverage. An operations center in Jordan started going online in the summer of
2012, including an airstrip and warehouses for arms. Saudi-procured
AK-47s and ammunition arrived, WSJ reported, citing Arab officials.

Although Saudi Arabia has officially maintained that it
supported more moderate rebels, the newspaper reported that “funds and
arms were being funneled to radicals on the side, simply to counter the
influence of rival Islamists backed by Qatar.”

But rebels interviewed said Prince Bandar is referred to as “al-Habib” or ‘the lover’ by al-Qaida militants fighting in Syria.

Peter Oborne, writing
in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, has issued a word of caution about
Washington’s rush to punish the Assad regime with so-called ‘limited’
strikes not meant to overthrow the Syrian leader but diminish his
capacity to use chemical weapons:

Consider this: the only beneficiaries from the atrocity
were the rebels, previously losing the war, who now have Britain and
America ready to intervene on their side. While there seems to be little
doubt that chemical weapons were used, there is doubt about who
deployed them.

"As buggered up as Britain is, and however much its government
resembles a football bat; their Parliament at least some of the time
takes its constitutional function seriouslyand acts as a check on the
Executive’s attempts to rule by decree.A lot of Americans are jealous. The Democrats in Congress vote in lockstep with the White House akin
to the old Supreme Soviet voting with the Politburo. And the
Institutional Republicans vote like they are aspirant members of the
Supreme Sovietwanting to impress the Politburo with their zeal.

The Republican House will not seriously oppose anything Obama does,
be it illegal, immoral, or unconstitutional. They will accept being
lied to under oath with no reaction. They will accept the setting up of
the precursor of a police state; and give every indication that the
actual establishment of one will go unopposed. And they will not use
the power of the purse to fulfill their constitutional duty to protect
the Constitution. What you see is envy and admiration. Would that we
had at least one party in Congress with a measurable testosterone count.

Most authorities are mum about the details, but one
fire official in Tuolumne County offered a tantalizing clue when he
recently told a community meeting that the fire was likely caused by
marijuana growers.

"We don't know the exact cause," said Todd
McNeal, fire chief in Twain Harte, a town that has been in the path of
the flames. But he told a community meeting that it was "highly suspect
that there might have been some sort of illicit grove, a
marijuana-grow-type thing."

"We know it's human caused.There was no lightning in the area," said McNeal, a former
captain with the Sonora Fire Department who has fought fires for 23
years for the Forest Service, the National Park Service and other
agencies in the Sierra Nevada.

"The
cause is still under investigation. There has been progress in the
case, but we can't share any additional details at this time," said
Stanton Florea, a spokesman with the U.S. Forest Service.

The Rim
Fire began Aug. 17 in a remote area of Stanislaus National Forest called
Jawbone Ridge, far from any paved road. Smoke from the blaze has
drifted so far that satellites are measuring it thousands of miles away
over Canada and the Great Lakes -- and in traces over Europe.

By Friday, the fire had
burned 213,414 acres, making it the fifth largest wildfire in California
history. It was 35 percent contained; fire officials are estimating
full containment on Sept. 20.

Over the past decade, the
Forest Service and rural police have reported an increasing number of
huge marijuana plantations being found in national forests across
California and other states.The operations are run byMexican drug
cartels and are often guarded by armed lookouts, authorities say.

In
2009, a huge fire that burned 90,000 acres in the Los Padres National
Forest near Santa Barbarawas set by a campfire from an illegal
marijuana grow, Forest Service investigators concluded at the time. The
Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department said the operation was run by a
Mexican drug cartel.Deputies reported finding30,000 marijuana plants
and an AK-47 assault rifle in a remote canyon near where the wildfire
started. They also found piles of garbage, propane tanks and a charred
stove.

A few weeks after that incident, the Santa Barbara County
sheriff said that the tightening of security around the U.S.-Mexico
border had led to the rise in drug gangs deciding to grow marijuana on
public lands in California.

"It's made it much more
difficult for the cartels to smuggle into the country, particularly
marijuana, which is large and bulky," Sheriff Bill Brown said. "It's
easier to grow it here."
McNeal, the Twain Harte fire chief, did not return calls on Friday, as 5,000 firefighters continued to battle the flames.

A top political leader in the area said that marijuana growers have been an ongoing problem in Stanislaus National Forest.

"We know that these illegal pot growers are out in our forests, and I think this fire just wiped out a whole bunch of them," said Randy Hanvelt, chairman of the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors.

"It's a problem in all the Sierra forests," he added. "When we find them, we pull out like 20,000 plants at a time."

Hanvelt
said he did not know what leads Forest Service investigators have made
in cracking the case. The area where the fire started is roughly 10
miles west of the Yosemite National Park entrance on Highway 120 and 8
miles east of the town of Groveland -- a rugged, steep expanse of dense
wilderness."It's a tough place to get to," he said. "You don't get there by accident."

In June, deputies pulled
out 15,000 marijuana plants from the adjacent forest to the south,
Sierra National Forest. The Madera County Sheriff's Department removed
four miles of irrigation pipe connected to streams and more than 2,000
pounds of garbage, propane tanks, bedding and food. A month earlier,
fire crews battled a 40-acre wildfire in the same area, and authorities
said it had been set by marijuana growers tied to Mexican drug cartels.

Also
Friday, U.S. government satellites continued to churn out imagesshowing just how far the Rim Fire's impacts are being felt.

Smoke
from the blaze drifted at least 2,500 miles, and reached Michigan,
Indiana, Ohio and the Great Lakes. The soot particles, picked up by nine
weather satellites run by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, were 10,000 feet or higher in the air, however, and
weren't affecting air quality in most places, except areas near the
fire, such as Reno and the San Joaquin Valley.

State scientists, grappling with an explosion of marijuana growing on
the North Coast, recently studied aerial imagery of a small tributary of
the Eel River, spawning grounds for endangered coho salmon and other
threatened fish.In the remote, 37-square-mile patch of forest,
they counted 281 outdoor pot farms and 286 greenhouses, containing an
estimated 20,000 plants — mostly fed by water diverted from creeks or a
fork of the Eel. The scientists determined the farms were siphoning
roughly 18 million gallons from the watershed every year, largely at the
time when the salmon most need it.

"That is just one small
watershed," said Scott Bauer, the state scientist in charge of the coho
recovery on the North Coast for the Department of Fish and Game. "You
extrapolate that for all the other tributaries, just of the Eel, and you
get a lot of marijuana sucking up a lot of water.… This threatens
species we are spending millions of dollars to recover."...

The marijuana boom that came with the sudden rise of medical cannabis in
California has wreaked havoc on the fragile habitats of the North Coast
and other parts of California. With little or no oversight, farmers
have illegally mowed down timber, graded mountaintops flat for sprawling
greenhouses, dispersed poisons and pesticides,

drained streams and
polluted watersheds.

Because marijuana is unregulated in
California and illegal under federal law, most growers still operate in
the shadows, and scientists have little hard data on their collective
effect. But they are getting ever more ugly snapshots.

A study
led by researchers at UC Davis found that a rare forest carnivore called
a fisher was being poisoned in Humboldt County and near Yosemite in the
Sierra Nevada....

Mark Higley, a wildlife biologist on the Hoopa Indian Reservation in
eastern Humboldt who worked on the study, is incredulous over the
poisons that growers are bringing in."Carbofuran," he said.
"It seems like they're using that to kill bears and things like that
that raid their camps. So they mix it up with tuna or sardine, and the
bears eat that and die."

The insecticide is lethal to humans in small doses, requires a special permit from the EPA
and is banned in other countries.Authorities are now regularly finding
it at large-scale operations in some of California's most sensitive
ecosystems.

It is just one in alitany of pollutants seeping
into the watershed from pot farms: fertilizers, soil amendments,
miticides, rodenticides, fungicides, plant hormones, diesel fuel, human
waste.

Scientists suspect that nutrient runoff from excess
potting soil and fertilizers, combined with lower-than-normal river flow
due to diversions, has caused a rash of toxic blue-green algae blooms
in the North Coast rivers over the last decade.

The cyanobacteria outbreaks threaten public health for swimmers and kill
aquatic invertebrates that salmon and steelhead trout eat. Now,
officials warn residents in late summer and fall to stay out of certain
stretches of water and keep their dogs out.

Eleven dogs have died from
ingesting the floating algae since 2001.The effects are
disheartening to many locals because healthier salmon runs were
signaling that the rivers were gradually improving from the damage
caused by more than a century of logging.

"Now with these water
diversions, we're potentially slamming the door on salmon recovery,"
said Scott Greacen, director of Friends of the Eel River.
In
June, Bauer and other agency scientists accompanied game wardens as they
executed six search warrants on growers illegally sucking water from
tributaries of the Trinity River. At one, he came upon a group of
20-somethings with Michigan license plates on their vehicles, camping
next to 400 plants. He followed an irrigation line up to a creek, where
the growers had dug a pond and lined it with plastic.

"I started talking to this guy, and he says he used to be an Earth
First! tree-sitter,saving the trees," Bauer said. "I told him
everything he was doing here negates everything he did as an
environmentalist."

The man was a small-timer in this new gold
rush. As marijuana floods the market and prices drop, many farmers are
cultivating ever bigger crops to make a profit. They now cut huge
clearings for industrial-scale greenhouses.With no permits or
provisions for runoff, the operations

dump tons of silt into the streams
during the rainy season.

Scanning Google Earth in his office
recently, Bauer came upon a "mega grow" that did not exist the year
before — a 4-acre bald spot in the forest with 42 greenhouses, each 100
feet long.

Figuring a single greenhouse that size would hold 80
plants, and each plant uses about 5 gallons of water a day, he
estimated the operation would consume 2 million gallons of water in the
dry season and unleash a torrent of sediment in the wet season.

Every grow has its own unique footprint. Some farmers on private land
avoid pesticides and poisons, get their water legally, keep their crops
small and try to minimize their runoff.Urban indoor growers might not
pollute a river, but they guzzle energy. A study in the journal Energy
Policy calculated that indoor marijuana cultivation could be responsible
for 9% of California's household electricity use. Other producers, like
the Mexican drug trafficking groups who set up giant growson public
lands right next to mountain streams, spread toxins far and wide and
steal enough water to run oscillating sprinkler systems.

But it's not just the big criminal groups skirting the rules. Tony
LaBanca, senior environmental scientist at Fish and Game in Eureka, saidless than 1% of marijuana growers get the permits required to take
water from a creek, and those who do usually do it after an enforcement
action.

Responsible growers could easily get permits, with no
questions asked about what type of plant they're watering, LaBanca said.
They just need to be set up to take their water in the wet season and
store it in tanks and bladders.

Fish and Game wants to step up
enforcement, but the staff is overwhelmed, he said. The agency has 12
scientists and 15 game wardens in the entire four counties on the North
Coast, covering thousands of mountainous square miles.

Until the last few years, dealing with marijuana cultivation was usually a minor issue. Now, LaBanca said, it is "triage."...

Deputies had severed the irrigation lines during the August raid,but
when Higley returned in September to study the environmental impact,
some of the line had been reconnected to sprinklers and plants had
re-sprouted. He saw a wet bar of soap on an upturned bucket and realized
workers were hiding nearby.

On this return visit, the site was
empty, and he started picking through the rubbish. "That's d-CON rat
poison right there, 16 trays."

At a dump pile next to the
creek, he found propane tanks, more rat poison, cans of El Pato tomato
sauce, and empty bags of Grow More fertilizer, instant noodles and
tortillas.

A lot of the trash had been removed during the
sheriff's eradication — dozens of empty bags accounting for 2,700 pounds
of fertilizer and boxes for 10 pounds of d-CON (enough to kill 21
spotted owls and up to 28 fishers), as well as two poached deer
carcasses and the remains of a state-protected ringtailed cat.

The case was brought by Judicial Watch,
the government watchdog nonprofit that has been fighting a long legal
battle seeking to force release of the White House visitor logs as
public records under the Freedom of Information Act.

The court said the president has such a prerogative because he is not
covered by the FOIA and because of "special policy considerations"that
allow exemption of visitor logs from classification as agency records
subject to release under the public records law.

President Obama began making public some of the White House visitor
logs in 2009, but refused a Judicial Watch request for all of the logs.

Administration spokesmen have often pointed to the partial release of
the logs to support the president's claim that his is "the most
transparent administration in history."

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was extremely disappointed by the
decision, saying "a president that doesn't want Americans, under law,
to know who his visitors are is a president who doesn't want to be
accountable. The appellate court decision punches another hole in the
Freedom of Information Act, the law which allows Americans to know what
their government is up to."

Fitton's group is considering filing an appeal, which would be to the Supreme Court. There is no guarantee that the high court would accept the case.

"The legal gymnastics in this unprecedented decision shows that
President Obama is not only one willing rewrite laws without going
through Congress. And this legal fight, in which President Obama is
fighting tooth and nail full disclosure under law of his White House
visitors, further exposes his big lie that his administration is the
most transparent in history.The silver lining is that at least the
appellate court opened up the records of tens of thousands of White
House visits that Obama was trying to keep secret," Fitton said.

The Obama administration is not solely responsible for the status of
the logs, however, as the court repeatedly cited in its decision a 2006
memorandum of understanding between President George W. Bushand the U.S. Secret Service, which has custody of the records.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another
nonprofit watchdog group that, like Judicial Watch, often focuses on
FOIA-related issues, pointed to the MOU's role in the decision:

"Central to the court's ruling was a 2006 memorandum of understanding
(MOU) the White House and Secret Service entered into after CREW made
requestsand then sued for access to the visitor logs. That MOU
specified that White House visitor records are controlled at all times
by the White House. The timing and circumstances surrounding the
creation of the MOU strongly suggest it was manufactured solely to
buttress the government's litigation posture, but the D.C. Circuit
refused to consider the government's motives."

Six tropical systems have formed in the Atlantic since the
season began June 1 and none of them has grown to hurricane
strengthwith winds of at least 74 miles (120 kilometers) per
hour. Accumulated cyclone energy in the Atlantic, a measure of
tropical power, is about 30 percent of where it normally would
be, said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of Colorado State
University’s seasonal hurricane forecasts.

“At this point, I doubt that a super-active hurricane
season will happen,” Klotzbach said in an e-mail yesterday.

The most active part of the Atlantic season runs from Aug.
20 to about the first week of October. The statistical peak
occurs on Sept. 10, according to the National Hurricane Center
in Miami. Two storms formed in August and the hurricane center
is tracking two areas of thunderstorms that have low to medium
chances of becoming tropical systems within five days.

Atlantic storms are watched closely because they disrupt
energy operations in and around the Gulf of Mexico and cause
widespread destruction when they come ashore.

In the basin now, warm sea water and a decreasing amount of
wind shear that can tear at the structure of budding storms mean
conditions are ripe “for a burst of activity,” said Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at Weather Services International
in Andover, Massachusetts.

A 'head scratcher'

“The very inactive season so far has been a bit of a head-scratcher,” Crawford said in an e-mail interview.

Air temperatures from the Caribbean to Africa have been
warmer than normal this year, reducing the instability in the
atmosphere that drives storm development, he said. In addition,
dry air is being pulled off Africa into the Atlantic, which also
cuts storm activity, he said.

Seasonal predictions were for an above-normal season.The
30-year average is for 12 storms with winds of at least 39 miles
per hour, the threshold at which they are named. Nineteen such
systems formed in each of the last three years.

Colorado State, which pioneered seasonal forecasts,
retreated slightly on its outlook in an early August update,
calling for 18 named storms. Eight should be hurricanes and
three of them major hurricanes, a reduction of one at each
level, the researchers said.

“If you don’t get your first hurricane by or before
August, it’s extremely difficult to get those high storm counts,especially for hurricanes and major hurricanes,” said Matt Rogers, president of Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda,
Maryland. “Amazing we’re on the 90th day of the hurricane
season and no hurricanes yet.”

While water temperatures in the Atlantic, Caribbean and
Gulf of Mexicoare high enough to spark hurricane formation,wind shear across the central part of the ocean has been high,
Klotzbach said. Shear is when the winds at different altitudes blow at
varying speeds or directions, whichcan tear at the structureof
a budding tropical system.

For natural gas markets, hurricanes have shifted from being
major output disruptions, in part because so much production has
shifted to land, to being “load killers” that cut electricity
demand as temperatures drop, said Teri Viswanath, director of
commodities strategy at BNP Paribas SA in New York.

The Gulf of Mexico is home to about 6 percent of U.S.
natural gas output, 23 percent of oil production and more than
45 percent of petroleum refining capacity, according to the U.S.
Energy Department. In 2001, Gulf waters accounted for 24 percent
of U.S. marketed gas production.

No bets

A quiet first half to the Atlantic storm season doesn’t
mean the second will be the same, she said. “It’s not over until it’s over,” Viswanath said.

Hurricane Sandy, which slammed into New York and New Jersey
last year, developed on Oct. 22 and went ashore on Oct. 29. It
killed at least 159 people and damaged or destroyed more than
650,000 homes in the U.S., according to a federal task force
report Aug. 19.

Crawford also said the 2013 season could reboundnow that
September has begun. He expects some of the barriers that have
damped activity so far to fall.

The 2002 season, the last to pass without a hurricane by
the end of August, included Hurricane Lili, a Category 4t storm
that caused about $860 million in damage and killed at least 13
people in the Caribbean and Louisiana from Sept. 21 to Oct. 4,
according to the hurricane center. The first hurricane to form
that year was Gustav, on Sept. 11.

"The
Southern Ocean wind stress errorhas a particularly large detrimental
impact on the Southern Ocean simulation by the models. Partly due to the
wind stress erroridentified above, the simulated location of the
Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is also too far north in most models
(Russell et al., 2006). Since the AAIW is formed on the north side of
the ACC, the water mass properties of the AAIW are distorted (typically
too warm and salty: Russell et al., 2006). The relatively poor AAIW
simulation contributes to the multi-model mean erroridentified above
where the thermocline is too diffuse, because the waters near the base
of thermocline are too warm and salty.

"A
boy stands as Sunni Muslims attend Friday prayers at the Al-Taqwa
mosque, one of two mosques hit by explosions last Friday, in Lebanon's
northern city of Tripoli, August 30, 2013. A Lebanese judge today
charged three Lebanese and two Syrians in connection with deadly car
bomb blasts against two Sunni mosques last week that left at least 47
people dead and more than 500 wounded." Reuters

Friday, August 30, 2013

"A small-town education chief in Indonesiamade headlines last week after he reportedly planned to impose mandatory virginity testsonfemale students entering high school.He cited concerns over
premarital sex and teen prostitution as the reason. But H.M. Rasyid, the
Education Agency chief of Prabumulih, a town in South Sumatra province,
wasn’t saying anything Indonesians hadn’t heard before.

In recent years, other figures have argued for virginity tests — an
invasive, humiliating procedure that is based on pseudo science —
including a provincial legislator in eastern Sumatra in 2010 and a
district chief in western Java in 2007. Both proposals were withdrawn after public
outrage,but some conservative politicians and religious figures* remain
in favor of the idea. Says Masruchah, deputy chair of the National Commission on Violence Against Women
(and who, like many Indonesians, uses one name): “They have no
understanding about human rights. They are more worried about image.”
The commission called virginity tests “a form of sexual violence against
women.”

In the wake of widespread condemnation, Rasyid has backtracked.
He now claims he only meant to support the parents of a girl who wanted
to rebut accusations that their daughter, a victim of a
human-trafficking ring, was no longer a virgin.

“Unmarried girls who aren’t virgins are deemed immoral, when in fact
they could be victims of abuse,” says Masruchah. “And victims may get
blamed and victimized again.” This happened last year to a 14-year-old girl who was expelled
from school after surviving kidnapping and rape by traffickers, because
she had “tarnished the school’s image.” The private school in Depok,
outside Jakarta, reversed its decision after a public backlash."...

Boehner,
like his golfing buddy Obama, doesn't like dissent. He, and his RINO
cohorts, can't stand the light of truth being shown on them. Sort of
like cockroaches when the lights go on; they run and hide."

It
is not the Conservatives who are banning the Heritage Foundation from
the "Conservative" Meetings but Rino scum. Either take the GOP back
from the RINOS, or kill the GOP altogether by taking all Conservatives
away. People keep saying this isn't possible. But as this is not a presidential election, it's past time to do."

That
goes to show you how some RINO'S are treating other conservative
people. Everyone needs to go on twitter and send a message to these
RINO'S and tell them there will be no more funding until they let the
Heritage Foundation back into their meetings. It doesn't say who barred
the Foundation from attending but I will find out and this person or
group will hear from me and will get a piece o my mind for not letting
the Heritage Group attend. They think they are getting a little big
for their britches and need to be brought down to size."

"Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who shocked Washington on Thursday with the announcement
that he would resign his Senate seat in January to become president of
the the Heritage Foundation, sent a parting shot at Speaker John Boehner
(R-Ohio) over the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

“Speaker
Boehner’s $800 billion tax hike will destroy American jobs and allow
politicians in Washington to spend even more, while not reducing our $16
trillion debt by a single penny,” he said in a statement. “If neither
party leadership is going to put forward a serious plan to balance the
budget and pay down the debt, we should end this charade.”...

"Two developments in the Republican Party point to its future: South
Carolina’s Jim DeMint announced his retirement from the United States
Senate to serve as president of the conservative Heritage Foundation,
and the Reuters News Service reports that GOP House Speaker
John Boehner is purging conservative Tea Party members from key
committees “as he seeks to tighten control over his unruly caucus ahead
of difficult votes on ‘fiscal cliff’ issues.”

The consolidation of America’s one-party state begins.

You see, it matters not how conservative a Republican you send to
Congress if his vote (and yours indirectly) is negated by the gelding
brothers John Boehner (House) and Mitch McConnell (Senate)....

"Many House Republicans refused to vote for Speaker John Boehner’s
(R-Ohio) Plan Bbill because they were “gun shy” about drawing primary
challengers in the 2014, according to several lawmakers.

"Asked why GOP leaders didn’t have the votes, deputy whip Rep. Mike
Conaway (R-Texas)told The Hill, “You've got to ask Club for Growth,
Heritage Action and all those guys who bullied membersof Congress into
voting against their own best interests.”

"The RSC's problem with Heritage isn't that it's trying to push
the GOP too far to the right to be competitive in elections. Their
problem with Heritage is that they're interfering with the GOP's effort
to put special-interest politics ahead of conservative principles.

House Republicans do not actually care about free markets or cutting government." (scroll down for this parag.)

"The UK may be out, but Saudi Arabia isn't taking any chances. Moments ago, Reuters reported that the regime which as we reported is
behind the entire conflict in Syria (hint: nat gas) has raised its
level of military alertness in anticipation of a possible Western strike
in Syria, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Saudi
Arabia's defense readiness, their version of DefCon, has been raised to
"two" from "five", a Saudi military source who declined to be named told
Reuters. "One" is the highest level of alert....

"The source said other countries in the region, including Jordan,
Turkey and Israel, appeared also to have raised their level of military
readiness.A second source said Saudi Arabia's defense readiness had been raised
last week, and meant that all leave for the armed forces would be
canceled.

The sources declined to give further details of what a change in
alert level would mean, but analysts said it was likely some forces
would be moved closer to national borders.

In Kuwait lawmakers have asked their government to inform them about
plans for readiness to deal with repercussions of a strike on Syria,
Kuwaiti newspapers reported.

Interior minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Hamad al-Sabah was told to take
all necessary measures in case of an emergency that might arise as a
result of strikes, the paper said.

Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. ally, Qatar and other Sunni Muslim powers
back the mainly Sunni rebels battling Assad, who is from Syria's
minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.The rebels have
been joined by foreign Sunni jihadis.""

"Yesterday the Telegraph's Evans-Pritchard dug up a note that we had posted almost a month ago,
relating to the "secret" meeting between Saudi Arabia and Russia, in
which Saudi's influential intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan
met with Putin and regaled him with gifts, including a multi-billion
arms deal and a promise that Saudi is "ready to help Moscow play a
bigger role in the Middle East at a time when the United States is
disengaging from the region", if only Putin would agree to give up his
alliance with Syria's al-Assad and let Syria take over, ostensibly
including control of the country's all important natgas transit infrastructure.
What was not emphasized by the Telegraph is that Putin laughed at the
proposal and brushed aside the Saudi desperation by simply saying "nyet." However, what neither the Telegraph, nor we three weeks ago, picked up on, is what happened after Putin put Syria in its place. We now know, and it's a doozy.

Courtesy of As-Safir (translated here),
we learn all the gritty details about what really happened at the
meeting, instead of just the Syrian motives and the Russian conclusion,
and most importantly what happened just as the meeting ended,
unsuccessfully (at least to the Saudi). And by that we mean Saudi
Arabia's threats toward Russia and Syria.

First, some less well-known observations on who it was that was
supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt even as US support was fading
fast:

"Bandar said that the matter is not limited to the kingdom and that
some countries have overstepped the roles drawn for them, such as Qatar
and Turkey. He added, “We said so directly to the Qataris and to the Turks. We rejected their unlimited support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere. The
Turks’ role today has become similar to Pakistan’s role in the Afghan
war. We do not favor extremist religious regimes, and we wish to
establish moderate regimes in the region. It is worthwhile to pay
attention to and to follow up on Egypt’s experience. We will
continue to support the [Egyptian] army, and we will support Defense
Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi because he is keen on having good
relations with us and with you. And we suggest to you to be in contact with him, to support him and to give all the conditions for the success of this experiment. We are ready to hold arms deals with you in exchange for supporting these regimes, especially Egypt.”"

So while Saudi was openly supporting the Egyptian coup, which is
well-known, it was Turkey and most importantly Qatar, the nation that is
funding and arming the Syrian rebels,that were the supporters of the
now failed regime. One wonders just how much Egypt will straing
Saudi-Qatari relations, in light of their joined interests in Syria.

Second, some better-known observations by Putin on Russia's relationship with Iran:

Regarding Iran, Putin said to Bandar that Iran is a neighbor,
that Russia and Iran are bound by relations that go back centuries, and
that there are common and tangled interests between them.
Putin said, “We support the Iranian quest to obtain nuclear fuel for
peaceful purposes. And we helped them develop their facilities in this
direction. Of course, we will resume negotiations with them as part of
the 5P+1 group. I will
meet with President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the Central Asia
summit and we will discuss a lot of bilateral, regional and
international issues. We will inform him that Russia is completely
opposed to the UN Security Council imposing new sanctions on Iran. We believe that the sanctions imposed against Iran and Iranians are unfair and that we will not repeat the experience again.”

Then, Putin's position vis-a-vis Turkey, whom he implicitly warns that it is "not immune to Syria's bloodbath."

Regarding the Turkish issue, Putin spoke of his friendship with
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan; “Turkey is also a
neighboring country with which we have common interests. We are keen to
develop our relations in various fields. During the Russian-Turkish
meeting, we scrutinized the issues on which we agree and disagree. We
found out that we have more converging than diverging views. I have
already informed the Turks, and I will reiterate my stance before my
friend Erdogan, that what is happening in Syria necessitates a different
approach on their part. Turkey will not be immune to Syria’s bloodbath.
The Turks ought to be more eager to find a political settlement to the
Syrian crisis. We are certain that the political settlement in Syria is
inevitable, and therefore they ought to reduce the extent of damage. Our
disagreement with them on the Syrian issue does not undermine other
understandings between us at the level of economic and investment
cooperation. We have recently informed them that we are ready to cooperate with them to build two nuclear reactors. This issue will be on the agenda of the Turkish prime minister during his visit to Moscow in September.”

Of course, there is Syria:

"Regarding the Syrian issue, the Russian president responded to
Bandar, saying, “Our stance on Assad will never change. We believe that
the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters.
During the Geneva I Conference, we agreed with the Americans on a
package of understandings, and they agreed that the Syrian regime will
be part of any settlement. Later on, they decided to renege on Geneva I.
In all meetings of Russian and American experts, we reiterated our
position. In his upcoming meeting with his American counterpart John
Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will stress the importance
of making every possible effort to rapidly reach a political settlement
to the Syrian crisis so as to prevent further bloodshed.”

Alas, that has failed.

So what are some of the stunning disclosures by the Saudis? First this:

Bandar told Putin, “There are many common values ??and goals that
bring us together, most notably the fight against terrorism and
extremism all over the world. Russia, the US, the EU and the Saudis
agree on promoting and consolidating international peace and security.
The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the
Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were
terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya. ... As an
example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in
the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The
Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled
by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction
without coordinating with us.These groups do not scare
us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no
role or influence in Syria’s political future.”

Perhaps the next time there is a bombing in Boston by some Chechen-related terrorists, someone can inquire Saudi Arabia what, if anything, they knew about that.
But the piece de resistance is what happened at the end of the
dialogue between the two leaders. It was, in not so many words, a threat
by Saudi Arabia aimed squarely at Russia:

As soon as Putin finished his speech, Prince Bandar warned
that in light of the course of the talks, things were likely to
intensify, especially in the Syrian arena, although he
appreciated the Russians’ understanding of Saudi Arabia’s position on
Egypt and their readiness to support the Egyptian army despite their
fears for Egypt's future.

The head of the Saudi intelligence services said that the
dispute over the approach to the Syrian issue leads to the conclusion
that “there is no escape from the military option, because it is the
only currently available choice given that the political settlement
ended in stalemate. We believe that the Geneva II Conference will be
very difficult in light of this raging situation.”

At the end of the meeting, the Russian and Saudi sides agreed to
continue talks, provided that the current meeting remained under wraps.
This was before one of the two sides leaked it via the Russian press.

Since we know all about this, it means no more talks, an implicit warning that the Chechens operating in proximity to Sochi may just become a
loose cannon (with Saudi's blessing of course), and that about a month
ago "there is no escape from the military option, because it is
the only currently available choice given that the political settlement
ended in stalemate." Four weeks later, we are on the edge of
all out war, which may involve not only the US and Europe, but most
certainly Saudi Arabia and Russia which automatically means China as
well. Or, as some may call it, the world.